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mcar

(42,476 posts) Mon Nov 20, 2017, 10:55 AM Nov 2017

Pierce: President* Trump Hears Mueller Knocking

...Over the weekend, the president* worked the sports beat. He got in a Twitter wrangle with LaVar Ball, America’s most insufferable sports parent, whose son was jailed for shoplifting in China only to be freed after a short period of incarceration in a luxury hotel. On Monday, the president* found his phone again and ripped Oakland Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch for Lynch’s behavior during the two national anthems played before an NFL game in Mexico City. While he’s no Red Ruffansore, the veteran sports columnist for the National Lampoon—“Water, which never has impressed the ol’ Redhead as a drink, fails to impress as a playing surface, either.”—the president* seems to be vigorously polishing whatever shiny objects are at hand. He’s hearing footsteps again, and ABC News may know why.

In particular, Mueller's investigators are keen to obtain emails related to the firing of FBI Director James Comey and the earlier decision of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from the entire matter, according to a source who has not seen the specific request but was told about it. Issued within the past month, the directive marks the special counsel's first records request to the Justice Department, and it means Mueller is now demanding documents from the department overseeing his investigation. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein played key roles in Comey's removal. And Sessions has since faced withering criticism from Trump over his recusal and Rosenstein's subsequent appointment of Mueller.

This is a new level of peril for the administration* in a couple of ways. First, in this case, there’s no way for them to argue that Mueller’s investigation is exceeding its mandate. Mueller has this job in the first place because the Congress was unsatisfied with the administration’s incoherent explanation for why Comey was fired. Second, if the relationship between Sessions and the president* is sufficiently poisoned, if only in the dark precincts of the presidential* mind, then Sessions might well wonder where his own self-interest lies—with the president who gets his mad on over the ingratitude of teenage shoplifters and their parents, or with the implacable investigator who can haul him into court every half-hour for the foreseeable future.

There’s no question that Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from any involvement into any investigation into the Russian ratfcking of the 2016 election got up the president*’s nose and lodged there. Now, Mueller seems to have ramped up that portion of his investigation. If I were the president*, I might decide this is a good time to repair my relationship with my attorney general.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a13808392/mueller-investigation-update/

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